Sunday, July 10, 2011

QUINN by Iris Johansen

Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan has starred in many books over the last dozen or so years. She has brought lost children “home” to their grieving families, as she calls identifying dead children through facial reconstruction. All the while, she has never stopped searching for answers to the questions surrounding the loss of her own beloved Bonnie who was abducted at the age of seven. Now, at last, we are to get answers in the current trilogy comprised of EVE (last April), QUINN (this month), and BONNIE, hopefully soon.

As QUINN opens, John Gallo, Bonnie’s natural father and a person of interest in Bonnie’s suspected murder, is on the run in the Wisconsin woods. Gallo was once thought dead, but was a prisoner of the North Koreans. The years of torture at their hands left Gallo’s mind unstable; he’s not sure whether or not he is guilty.

Joe Quinn, now with the Atlanta Police Department and Eve’s long-time companion, is in hospital fighting for his life after being stabbed by the man who told Eve that Gallo killed Bonnie—Paul Black, not himself a good guy. While Eve haunts the ICU between brief visits at the unconscious Joe’s bedside, her friend, CIA agent Catherine Ling, meets Eve’s adopted daughter, Jane Macguire, at the airport.

And now that most of the principal players have been introduced, the scene switches to the past when then FBI Agent Joe Quinn was sent to Atlanta to assist in the investigation of the Duncan child-napping case. Eve and her mother, both giving birth at sixteen and single, could hardly be more different. Eve worked hard to make something of herself to give Bonnie a better life than she had growing up. She was doing quite well, only to have Bonnie taken from her during a moment’s distraction in the park.

Joe Quinn had always been a loner—not given to relationships—but when he met Eve Duncan, he found himself fixated on her. He became highly protective of her. Those feelings lasted for years; now he loves her deeply, even though he knows he comes in second to Eve’s obsession with finding Bonnie and “bringing her home.”

Chapter nine takes us back to the present and more of this riveting novel. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough reading QUINN. Something happens on every page, whether it’s furthering the plot or the characters—both good and evil—and their emotions, motives and relationships. There are subplots and more people involved in QUINN. With multiple points of view and revealing dialogue and action, the tale unfolds as if in front of us. Much of it wraps up, but the rest of the story remains for the third volume of the trilogy.